Is anybody really listening?

I like teaching and I like being a teaching assistant in general. Students at Northwestern are pretty smart, so it's not so much a challenge of getting them to understand the material, but to get them as excited about it as you are. And yes, the evolution of homomer protein assembly can get me pretty excited, especially when you throw some mass spec data in there. Oh man. (Levy ED et al. 2008, Assembly reflects evolution of protein complexes, if you're interested) I did two different discussion sessions today on this paper and it's so interesting to see the different responses that two different classes will give you. One class can follow your questioning and reasoning so well, and the other, well, let's say there were a few blank stares. Did I really present the material that differently? Are they just acclimated to the other TA's teaching style? I'll probably never figure it out. And I'll take hundreds of blank stares as long as there are those few moments where suddenly the light comes on and there's the "ah ha" moment. Those are great moments.